In unusually personal and vulgar terms

President Trump assailed the television host Mika Brzezinski on Thursday in unusually personal and vulgar terms, the latest of a string of escalating attacks by the president on the national news media.

And women. There’s more than one pattern here. There’s Trump’s loathing and disgust at women as well as his hatred of independent journalism.

The graphic nature of the president’s suggestion that Ms. Brzezinski had undergone plastic surgery was met with immediate criticism on social media. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, wrote on Twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And a spokesman for NBC News, Mark Kornblau, wrote on Twitter: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’ ”

In a statement Thursday morning, MSNBC said, “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

“I don’t think that the president has ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” she told the Fox anchor Bill Hemmer. “This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media, and the liberal elites within the media.”

No, this is not a president who fights fire with fire. It’s a president who fights criticism with vulgar sexist trashy personal insults.

“As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” the first lady’s communications director Stephanie Grisham said in a statement to CNN when asked about the tweets.

Er…? That’s the definition of a bully.

Also, it’s wholly inappropriate for an elected head of state. We’re allowed to criticize him, indeed it’s our civic duty to criticize him if he’s wrong or incompetent or a vulgar trashy misogynist bully.

5 Responses to “In unusually personal and vulgar terms”

And when we criticize them, if we are wrong (or he believes we are wrong), the correct response is a polite, dignified rebuttal, pointing out the evidence that demonstrates that we are wrong, not a personal attack on someone’s appearance.

The problem with Melania’s defense is that he did not get punched; he gets rebuked by the press. And every single president ever has had to deal with that. Obama got some of the most ugly commentary of any president in my lifetime, and never, ever, ever, ever responded in such a grotesque, inappropriate manner. Of course, I’m sure in Trumpworld, that translates as “Obama was a weak sissy who throws like a girl” – in short, the exact sort of ‘rebuttal’ we are getting accustomed to from this schoolyard bully with a limited vocabulary.

One issue with Brian Stellar’s bit up there–I’m long past the point where anything Trump does ‘shocks’ me, and I wish that word would be retired with respect to the vile cretin. I may be appalled, outraged and disgusted, but he’s lost the power to be shocking to me, and the same should be true for anyone paying attention for the last few months.